Strawberry Nutella Eggless Cookies

For this month’s Home Bakers Challenge, I chose strawberry nutella cookies as they were too tempting to not to try. We were give four cookies to choose from by Vijaya Lakshmi. This recipe is from Sinfully Spicy and the pink cookies with nutella filling were mouthwatering.

My cookies were not very pink as I did not use the red food color. I baked these cookies over the weekend and could not take the pictures the same day as I did not have nutella at home. I went to the store couple of times and forgot to pick up Nutella both the times.

Even without the nutella, the cookies were addictive and we, rather I finished half the cookies even before I bought the nutella. Once I got the nutella, we finished the rest, saving one cookie for the photo shoot I followed the recipe as given without any modifications.

4 tbsp. Butter at room temperature (I left it on the countertop for about 3 hours)

7 tbsp. Granulated Sugar

1 tsp. Vanilla Essence

3 tbsp. crushed fresh Strawberry Mix

3-4 medium sized Strawberries (I used 4 strawberries)

1 tsp. Milk

2 drops Red Food Color or Strawberry Essence (I did not use it)

Nutella for filling

Preparation:

Crush all the ingredients listed under crushed strawberry mix. I pureed in a mini grinder until strawberries were crushed. Recipe says the quantity of strawberry mix will vary depending on the consistency but it should not be runny or watery.

Sift together flour, salt and baking powder in a bowl and keep aside.

In a large bowl, cream the softened butter and sugar using a hand whisk or an electric blender for about 4 minutes. I used my hand mixer and beat it for 2 – 2 ½ minutes until the sugar and butter were creamy.

Add essence and strawberry mix, and continue to beat until it is well blended into the mixture.

Gently fold in little flour at a time into butter mixture to form the dough. I used my hand mixer to fold in the flour. The dough will be soft and little sticky. Once the dough is formed, might need to use hands to bring the dough together. Apply little oil or the left over butter from the butter wrap to hands and bring the dough together and make a ball.

Cover the dough bowl with a plastic cling wrap and refrigerate for ½ – 1 hour. I refrigerated for 1 hour. This step is required to solidify the butter. After all the beating, mixing and folding, butter will melt. This step makes it easy to make the cookies.

Pre-heat the oven to 350 F / 175 C.

Line a large cookie sheet with a parchment paper.

Take the dough out, apply some oil/butter to palms and make small balls. One can use tablespoon or an ice-cream scoop for to make even size balls.

Place the balls on the cookie sheet and press down slightly to flatten or flatten them in the palms as I did and then place them on the cookie sheet.

Using a thumb or a back of a teaspoon or a back of a melon scoop, make a small hole in the middle of the cookies for the filling.

If you feel the butter in the cookies is melting, refrigerated the cookies for about 15 minutes. I skipped this step and baked the cookies right away.

Place the cookie sheet in the pre-heated oven and bake for 8-12 minutes until the bottom starts to turn brown. Do not bake for more than 12 minutes as the cookies will continue to back on the sheet, even after removing from the oven. I baked for 12 minutes. Temperatures vary from oven to oven hence keep checking the cookies from 8 minutes into baking.

Take the cookie sheet out from the oven and using a spoon or a melon scoop, press out the hole in the cookies. This has to be done when the cookies are hot and will not be able to do it once the cookies cool.

Once the cookies cool, fill in the nutella in the little holes of the cookies. Nutella can be substituted with melted jam or melted chocolate chips or with nuts. Store in an air tight container.